


take a sip of my magic potion (i'll make you fall in love)

by latinacap



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Greek Mythology - Freeform, M/M, Magical Creatures, Meet-Cute, Modern!Bucky/Captain America!Steve, Positive Spells, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-World War II Bucky Barnes, Swearing, Urban Fantasy, Use of a Love Postion, White Magic, Witchcraft, coffeehouse AU, fluffy with a side of angst, past temporary character death, witch!bucky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-08
Updated: 2019-03-08
Packaged: 2019-11-13 19:14:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,811
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18037247
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/latinacap/pseuds/latinacap
Summary: Working as a barista at Little Spider's wasn't the most glamorous of jobs, but the pay was good for a college student and Bucky's boss was decent enough. It also didn't hurt that Hot Blonde Guy walked into the coffeehouse every Tuesday, and if Bucky put in a little extra something in his cup — a little magical extra something — well, that was just between him and his familiar. It was all going great until Bucky mixed vodka and his grimoire and accidentally baked a love potion into a cupcake and fed it to Hot Blonde Guy.And if that wasn't bad enough, a blast from the past in the form of his ex-boyfriend/witch hunter is hunting him.And if that wasn't bad enough, Hot Blonde Guy turned out to be Captain Fucking America.





	take a sip of my magic potion (i'll make you fall in love)

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome to my StuckyAuBang fic! 
> 
> I've had this idea for a while, and I never really got around to it until I heard of this bang. It was the perfect choice for this event since it includes a lot of fun and fluffy bits! 
> 
> A huge thank you to my artist, gigglepud! Seriously guys, go check out her art, it's ammmaazzing!! I couldn't have asked for a sweeter, more talented artist <3
> 
> Another thank you to my beta, Avery, who does all my other fics on this account <3 She's my sounding board, so go give her a follow on tumblr @ heterophobemarvel! 
> 
> Last but not least, thanks to you all for reading <3 You guys are why most fic writers write and we couldn't be more thankful for you guys!!
> 
> The title is from Little Mix's Black Magic.
> 
> Enjoy!

_Psychic Advisor!_

_Guaranteed to solve your problems, 100% accuracy!_

_Spiritual contact, reiki healing, tarot, palm readings, and more!_

_Bring flyer for free first reading!_

_917 - 107 - 1918_

 

“Jesus, Becks. _This_ is how you make a few extra bucks a month?”

 

Becca rolled her eyes, swinging the door of her bedroom open to allow her customer in. Standing at 5’4 with a thin build,  Rebecca Barnes had always been one for sentiment from a young age. There were piles of boxes upon boxes in her closet chalk full of old letters and birthday cards that she has received in her entire twenty years of life. All the books on her shelf were bookmarked with pressed flowers that came from graduation bouquets from her family over the years. She kept every single gift presented to her — be it a faded stuffed animal to a keychain from a country she couldn’t pronounce — because from how she explained it, Becca learned that the most powerful magic lived in the smallest things in life. While their family has always been strictly devout members of the Temple of Gaia ( _blessed be_ ), Becca liked to not only draw her powers from the All Mother, but also experiment with different kinds of magic in the world.

 

And, boy, there was a _lot_ of different kinds of magic. Elemental, necromancy, botany, divination, fauna, satanic — all of it were so interesting that Becca couldn’t just choose one. Like a parched explorer at an oasis, she seemed to want to submerge herself in the vast open world of magic that she had only known such a small portion of in her short life. She frequently visited different coven orientations — never with the intent to join, but rather to learn —  and has already gained so much knowledge of how the different witches in the world used their craft in different ways.

 

One of the newer magic components that she obsessed with at the moment was divination through tarot cards. She once told him that an artistic part of her loved the vibrant colors and style choices that the cards possessed, while the other part of her was completely gone on how effortlessly easy it was to read them. Like an open book once she memorized each card and its meaning.

 

The All Mother has blessed her with this thirst for knowledge, so who was she to turn down such a stupendous gift? What better way to practice the power of prediction of the future than to call her soulmarkless older brother over for a reading? Why _not_ send Bucky a flyer of her new side business tucked into the collar of his familiar and bombard him with hundreds of texts over the course of a day until he finally gave in and hoped the earliest train to Scarsdale from Brooklyn? It’s not like he had a job, or a hobby, or friends, or a new show on Netflix that’s practically begging him to watch it. No, no, _let’s_ bother the male witch on his day off.

 

He had to admit though, there was something other than his little sister that lured him to the suburbia of Scarsdale in the middle of October. It’s a thought that has been nagging him since he was a young man watching the world through rose-tinted glasses.

 

Becca snatched the flyer from his hands, closing the door behind him with a flick of her wrist without ever touching the wooden board. She scanned the hot pink paper with a furrow of the eyebrows. “What’s wrong with it? It’s straight to the point, offers a discount, and has contact information — the perfect advertisement,”

 

“It’s not what’s _on_ the flyer that’s wrong. It’s the fact that you’re becoming every witch’s mother’s nightmare,” Bucky sighed, slipping his messenger bag off over his head while heading over to Becca’s altar of their Goddess Gaia to pay his respects. His fingers touched the flowers set next to the magnificent statue of Gaia, and he pressed a kiss to the statue’s swollen stomach, silently thanking her for the safe journey out of the city. When he looked around, he found an assortment of different trinkets that definitely did not apply to the Temple of Gaia. Sigils, new books with diverse symbols etched into the covers, hanging ornaments with enough odd combinations to be something more than decoration … it was almost like actually walking into one of the witch stores that his great grandmother would drag him to as a child. _Just need to grab one thing, James, then we’ll be out before the moon rises,_ she’d always promise. It never held any water, not when Hilda Barnes was notorious for spending eons in a shop trading spells and potions with other witches from other covens. “Next thing you know, you’ll be living on top of a Walgreens with a neon sign,”

 

“There’s a difference from scamming people with palm readings and actually giving accurate readings, you dipshit,” the young woman huffed, shooing her brother away from the altar while muttering something about negative energy harming her flora. For an extra measure, she struck a match from an old hotel matchbox that their mother got for her on her trip to Vermont, and lit an incense stick with a lovely lavender to purify the room. Her hand waved in the thin trail of smoke to spread the energy around the room to cleanse. “What are you doing here, anyway? I had Samantha give Sabrina that flyer _ages_ ago,”

 

“I’m here for my tarot reading, _duh,_ ” he chuckled as he reached up to mess her hair, dodging the flying hand that came at him when his sister squealed in horror. He took a seat on the girl’s normal bed, finding that the pink bed covers with small white flowers stood out like a sore thumb in the clutter in her room. It was almost as if it was the one place in her room where she could turn off _Rebecca Barnes the Witch_ and turn on _Becca the Medical Major._ Two sides of the same coin that was his favorite little sister.

 

At the mention of a cards, the girl’s eyes lit up like a Christian Christmas tree. “Wait, really? You want a reading?”

 

“I got a flyer, don’t I? It’s my first one so don’t try any funny business,” Bucky said, making room for Becca to sit next to him with a large box that looked like it belonged to a pair of heels at some point. It was a glossy black with a sigil drawn on in white paint, it’s lines hesitant and uneven but still looked halfway decent enough to possibly work. Inside, Becca had the thing almost bursting at the seams with even more objects and medallions. Candles of all the colors that existed, jars labeled with different teas, and a few decks of cards that were there for more of the aesthetic than actual magical purposes.

 

Her fingers danced on almost all the objects in the box before halting at a beat-up small red box with the words ‘Tarot’ written in a goldish-yellow. The corners were worn down to blunt holes at the bottom, and it had faded images of what looked to be one of the cards all around the front and back. Four gold stars on the sides reminded Bucky of the ones he’s seen on his school textbooks of heavily detailed renitions of the American flag. Sliding the tab of the box open, Becca breathed in deeply through her nose as she took the deck out and began shuffling them in her nimble hands. The ancient power was there, no doubt, though Bucky didn’t really get that much of a punch as other magical artifacts have done in the past.

 

“What do you want to know, my child?” she said in a fake deep voice that made her seem like the older women from the coven that would bombard them with questions on how their ambrosia salad tasted. A quick dull punch to the arm made her stop with a wince.

 

“You know what I want to know, Becks,”

 

Her face dropped all the humor that laced her features earlier, and were replaced with a look that Bucky was sick of seeing from everyone. It was quick, and gone within seconds, yet it still made him feel uneasy about seeing the sympathy in her face long after the incident occured. “Love, it is. Clear you mind, open your mind, and allow me to show you your future,”

 

The cards were flipped onto its face with the drawn pictures facing down into her palm while her other hand slid the first few cards off the top. She took nine off the top and placed them down in three rows of three cards, all facing the bedspread as she motioned to the first row from top to bottom. “The past,” then to the middle row, “the present,” and finally to the last row to the right, “the future,”

 

Placing all ten fingers on the ‘past’ cards, Becca breathed in deeply with her eyes closed. Her lips started to move silently around whatever spell gave the cards that extra pizzazz that separated her from the other fortune tellers all over the globe. The diamond patterns on the cards were becoming increasingly hypnotic as she continued to chant a slow building incantation until it was loud enough for Bucky to hear her.

 

The words were in English — an older English that made it almost impossible to understand, but not as old as the latin from the more ancient forms of magic that existed in the world. It was nothing like the kind their ancestors would’ve used to trap malevolent spirits that roamed the Earth back when early man was just starting to form civilizations. This English was a medieval kind, one from the early age of the Renaissance and at the turn of the century when many of their kind were burned at stakes in front of the town’s people for entertainment.

 

Another deep breathe, and Becca began flipping the cards in the past column over one by one. The illustrations were magnificently done, all the cards displaying a bright and colorful scene with the name of them written in dark ink at the bottom. “I see you come from a broken home. The devastation of a divorce left you unable — or unwilling — to trust people in your live. I also see that you were in love, and it ended terribly. Love has always been a dea- … I mean, bad omen for you,” Becca spoke slow and gently, glancing up at Bucky after every statement as if she’s afraid of an outburst from the older man. When the other witch didn’t say anything, she continued. “Something awful happened to you because of love, but you were reborn from the experience,”

 

That was an understatement. Considering the steps that it took for Bucky to be in front of his sister at the moment, being reborn was putting it in the simplest way possible. Reborn meant given new life, coming back and being a better self than before, and he doubts the cards would be so literal in their prediction as to saying outright that Bucky had been killed when he was sixteen.

 

It happened on an overcast afternoon when he was in high school, on Halloween when the veil between the living and dead was almost non-existent and either one could end up in the other’s world. For witches, it was the Samhain and definitely one of the happiest times of the year for covens all around the world. He doesn’t remember much about the day, nothing too interesting happening before and after the incident. All he can clearly remember was holding hands with his boyfriend as they walked through the barren woods on their way to school, the sharp bite of a blade sliding into his body multiple times, and the feeling of breath returning to his body like a punch in the gut, coughing up dirt and moss while clinging to the arms of his saviour.

 

Needless to say, there were many reasons why love was not his first priority.

 

Becca hovered her hand over the middle row now, flipping the cards over once more and biting her dark burgundy lip. She clicked her tongue. “I see that you’re currently stuck in the same routine. You don’t take risks, and you play it safe. Essentially, the cards are telling me you’re a fucking geriatric,”

 

“God, I can’t wait to give you a one star _Yelp_ review,”

 

“Shush! I’m working here,” Becca said, never taking her eyes off the cards. She looked between all three of them, a wrinkle between her brow deepening as she tried to understand something hidden in the illustrations. She apparently found it, because one second she was concentrated on the cards, and the next she was slamming her hand down on the comforter with a horrified gasp, “You met someone!”

 

“Oh for Gaia’s sake, Becca-”

 

“Why didn’t you tell me you met someone?! This is huge!”

 

The truth of the matter was it wasn’t _that big_ a deal. It was just a stupid crush that didn’t matter at all, and it wasn’t worth getting his sister’s hopes up about something that Bucky wasn’t even 100% sure was going to come to full term. He barely even knew anything about the guy. Telling Becca about the stranger would just encourage her to try and use a location spell to find him using a used coffee cup or something.

 

His love life didn’t need help, _thank you_ very much. He was perfectly happy being alone — he had a good job at a local coffeehouse with an absent but fair boss, was in school for engineering, and he had a ton of great friends who were a lovely mix of magicals and mortals. Sure, he did get lonely on rainy days when all he wants to do is curl up with a warm body next to him, or when Bucky craved a hand to hold while walking in the park near the coffeehouse. Hell, he wouldn’t even mind someone to tell him all about their hobbies and interests with that twinkle in their eye that people always get. But he doesn’t need someone to ‘complete’ him, and he sure as Hell wasn’t going to give himself to someone after what happened the first and last time he did that.

 

If anything, Bucky was as anti-romantic as a hopeless romantic could get. He hated seeing couples talking quietly at restaurants or a lovesick teen getting up early to buy birthday balloons for their crush. It was bittersweet, because he knew he didn’t really hate it, he was just jealous.

 

He wanted someone to dote on, to be in a bodega and think, ‘ _Oh, I wonder if I should pick up more of this for them?’._ He wanted the grand gestures, the small thoughtfulness, the expensive dinners, the cheap take outs. Being born in a Temple of Gaia coven didn’t mean he couldn’t venture a tad bit into the Aphrodite devotion and it all felt like glitter in his chest to think that there was an unspoken rule in the universe that love was _the_ most powerful magic in the world – ancient and all-knowing, a kind of magic even the most skeptic of mortals could understand completely. But after being burned so badly by someone you’re meant to trust without question, well, it didn’t make him all the eager to do it all over again.

 

Growing up from a broken home where he had no reference for love and being stabbed through the heart – both literally and metaphorically – by his first love, it felt that Bucky was missing an important puzzle piece, and he had no way of getting it.

 

He shrugged Becca off, clicking his tongue to get Becca’s familiar to come to him. A fearsome goblin in her real form — sharp teeth and vicious growls that could send anything packing the moment it lays eyes on her — but as a cuddly white rabbit, well, Samantha was too adorable to resist. It also didn’t help that Becca insisted on repurposing a baby flower hair clip on her head. The witch’s fingers buried themselves in her snowy fur, and raised an eyebrow at Becca. “This is kinda unprofessional, Miss. Barnes. Can we _please_ get back to my reading?”

 

“Call me Madam Zeroni,” she giggled, her snort cutting the giggle midway just like it always did when she was a kid, “Well, the cards also tell me that you’re lonely — big shock there – but you’re happy with your career, educational and job-wise,”

 

“ _I_ could’ve told you that,”

 

“By Gaia’s left tit, Bucky, how can you be a fucking witch and so skeptical at the same time?” Becca flipped over the last row of cards, and, oh, that couldn’t be good.

 

The first card she revealed had no illustration or words on it. The back was still a bloody red diamond pattern with golden stars, but the front was completely white without even a smidge of color. It was eerie how completely flushed of color it was, but Bucky didn’t know enough about tarot cards to be all that concerned with it. It wasn’t until Becca got that wrinkle between her brows again that he realized it wasn’t normal. Samantha hopped out of his lap with a powerful spring, landing somewhere to his left and out of his field of vision. The young witch cursed under her breath, turned the card over, repeated the incantation like before, and flipped it back. Nothing. “Okay. I vetted this deck myself. I literally went card by card in this entire deck. This has _never_ happened before,”

 

“C’mon, sis. Stop pulling my leg, what does it say?” Bucky smiled, but it quickly dropped when the young woman didn’t smile back. In retrospect, Becca had grown up being a bit of a prankster as a kid. Ever since she had found out about her powers, she’d taken to pulling all sorts of mischief around the house and family. Things would go missing only to turn up in odd places, Bucky’s clothes would somehow turn all pink, and the cookie jar always seemed to vanish just as someone went to grab one. Winifred and Bucky were more conservative about their magic, only using it whenever it was absolutely necessary, while Becca used it as an everyday tool to her life. She could just be messing with him. It wouldn’t be the first time she’s done something similar. “Seriously. I’ve gotta be home in a few hours if I want to get my homework done before work tomorrow,”

 

“It’s not me!” Becca snapped. She flipped over the rest of the row quickly — a neat and organized line of blank cards facing the siblings as if it were innocently doing its job. The two shared a look, blinked, and then watched as the rest of the cards suddenly started to bleed red from the middle. The Death, the Lovers, the Hermit — all were being obliterated right before their very eyes as if someone was pressing a marker at the center, letting the ink seep into the paper like a virus. Becca reached out to grab hold of her brother’s wrist, gasping at the horror of a tool meant to predict the future obliterating the rest of the timeline. It felt uncomfortable seeing it happen first hand, a bad omen of what is to come.

 

He doesn’t think that even his grandmother’s curse removal ritual would be enough to cleanse him of whatever the fuck was going on, and that was saying something since Ethel Barnes was the fucking Supreme of their coven.

 

Once all the past and present cards were a sharp crimson to contrast the snowy white of the future cards, Becca was finally able to look up at Bucky with wide eyes. Her mouth moved silently as if trying to find something, anything to say about what just happened in front of them. Samantha was perched between them, sitting off to the side of the cards as she twitched her nose at the two of them. If his own familiar were here, he was positive she’d say something snarky and sarcastic about how his life was so sad that even magic didn’t want anything to do with it.

 

Becca whipped her head around to stare at Samantha, her boxer braids moving fluidly with the motion. She fidgeted with the hem of her T-shirt between long fingers as she focused on whatever her familiar was trying to tell her about the cards. She didn’t seem to like the theory the bunny was putting out though, because she wrinkled her nose in disgust. “You’re crazy. I must’ve gotten the spell wrong. There hasn’t been one of those assholes around here in _ages!_ It’s not 1692 anymore, Sam. The Supreme wo-”

 

Anything else that Becca was about to say died in her throat. Both witches jumped back in unison as the Lovers card — the traces of the original illustration of a man and woman dressed in medieval attire holding hands while a blindfolded cherub watched over them protectively still were visible under the red blemish — caught fire with a black flame that was unlike another either witch has ever witnessed. Samantha grunted angrily at the fire, hopping into her witch’s lap to protect her from the flame as it engulfed the card completely. It didn’t catch on the pink bedding, though, or on the cards nearest to it, preferring to devour the Lovers slowly until nothing remained, but a pile of ash.

 

The candles that Becca had on around the room flicked off when the flame died down in the embers of the card, leaving the two in utter disbelief. It felt like the world’s longest game of chicken to see would would talk first and lose, both too shocked to even think of putting the situation into words. Unfortunately, Bucky has never been good at those types of games. “What. The fuck was that?” he gasped, leaning closer to the rows of cards.

 

Becca tossed a braid over her shoulder, letting out a shaky breath. She picked up one of the bleached cards, frowning at them and then her brother. “ _That,_ my dear Watson, is the six million dollar question,” she started, staring at the card in her fingers. She blinked, and the card disappeared from their view along with a very on-edge Samantha. “I sent it to Auntie Ida. Samantha will explain everything, then maybe she’ll know what to do,”

 

“What do _you_ think happened?”  

 

“Honestly?” Becca sighed, gathering the rest of her cards in both hands. Manual handling was best for this sort of frickle magic, otherwise there was no doubt in his mind that Becca wouldn’t have used her powers to clean up the mess on her bed. She didn’t elaborate on her statement until all the cards were safely tucked away into its appropriate box. With a snap of her fingers, a bundle of sage appeared in her hand along with a lighter that proudly showed off a generic picture of the Statue of Liberty. It didn’t take a genius to know that she wasn’t waiting time to clean and cleanse the deck. “I think you’re in for a hell of a ride, brother,”

 

It took him a few weeks after the tragic discount tarot reading that Bucky realized that Rebecca Barnes had no fucking idea how right she was.

* * *

Out of more than two hundred accused, nineteen were found guilty and sentenced to death by hanging. All mortals. _That’s_ how the bloodline of witches were able to continue to thrive in America for generations upon generations after the gallows have long since been destroyed by time.

 

Bucky had heard the stories so many times throughout his childhood. He remembered cowering at the thought of a colonist hiding in his closet rather than a monster with sharp teeth and claws. It was a cultural thing at that point – mothers would wag their fingers at their children and say, “ _Behave or I’ll summon the colonists to come get you,”._ He can still recall how Becca would burst into tears whenever their mother said that to her on holidays, hiding under the table in the kitchen in hopes that the scary mortal wouldn’t sniff her out like a bloodhound. The collective image of them now had warped ordinary men from the past into creatures that haunted young witches in the dead of night when all was too still and their familiars were yet to be binded to them for protection. Hell, Bucky remembered once dressing up as one on Samhain complete with cheap vampire fangs and fake blood dripping down his jaw, running around scaring his fellow Children of Gaia.

 

The point being that witches are, by nature, the most careful and clever of all the other beings that roamed the Earth under the mortal’s noses. They can blend seamlessly into the world of mortals and never be discovered, live an entire life with a human partner and never once putting themselves. It was all in either being conservative with magic use, or being quick enough to think ten steps ahead of a mortal.

 

Which is why Bucky was _so_ going to be burned at the stake.

 

See, there’s a bit of a pattern that Bucky had noticed lately occurring in the coffeehouse. Well, not so much as a _pattern_ as a certain _attractive_ man.

 

Every Tuesday, around eleven o’clock in the morning, Bucky would find himself face to face with the most attractive man he had ever seen in his young life. The man would come in looking like an absolute _wreck,_ completely devoid of any spark of luster in his eyes and slouching from the weight of the world baring down on him. Gaia’s left tit, all Bucky wanted to do was wrapped the man into a soft blanket, shove some tea into his hands, and hug him until the blonde was relaxed enough to become a noodle. He carried this air of stale and dreariness that made Bucky gag at the mere presence. He couldn’t help but wonder what his Grandmother would say about the man’s aura and horoscope chart.

 

The story of Hot Blonde Guy started one particular afternoon a few weeks ago: The man came up and asked for just a black coffee. That’s it. Nothing else next to it, no special requests for an extra shot of espresso or caffeine. Hell, even one of their energy might help, if not a bit stale. It was fucking ridiculous, how would a black coffee be able to erase the wrinkles forming around his deep blue eyes? Coffee was great, don’t get him wrong, but coffee isn’t a fucking magic poti-

 

Oh.

 

_Oh._

 

Bucky smiled, told the man his total, and then turned his back toward the blonde. He make the coffee like he usual did, taking a deep breath of the pungent brew, and got to work. It wouldn’t be the best he’d ever made considering that he didn’t have all his supplies with him, not by a long shot. The only real reassurance was that this kind of magic was something his grandmother was particularly fond of expressing whenever he and Becca would stay over for their craft studies. He recited the old Latin for a basic spell, the words rolling off his tongue like an old psalm as he threw in bits of vanilla into the paper cup. The dark liquid glew a dull navy shade, bubbling slightly for a moment, then it settled into a regular ol’ cup of joe. The witch handed it back to the blonde, telling him to enjoy the drink.

 

The other man turned his back to make his leave, sipping the drink while frowning down at his phone. That was supposed to be it. The last that Bucky would ever think about forever, but then he saw it. The man’s shoulders loosened immediately, making him stand taller with his aura going from a murky, drowsy mess into a new clear, confident vibe that rippled back to Bucky. Another sip, and he was turning around with a bewildered expression that made the brunette's stomach flutter with butterflies.

 

“ _This is … great,_ ”

 

The next Tuesday, Hot Blonde Guy returned with dark eyes and tense shoulders. Bucky poured in a mixture of lavender and honey into his hot tea, and the man smiled a dopey grin that brightened the entire room.

 

Another week flies by, the man ordered a lemon bar, and made small talk with the witch. He learned the blonde’s name is Stephen, he works for the government, and he has a thing for all things strawberry. Bucky winked at him when he handed Stephen a cup of black coffee with an extra boost of sugar he poured in with a cheeky good luck spell.

 

Every week, he found himself watching the clock tick down to when Stephen would walk in with his crooked grin, wearing a shirt that’s far too tight to actually really fit him, and smelling of Old Spice soap that lingers behind long after he leaves. His coworkers have made it into a pool of when Bucky was going to get the balls to actually approach Stephen with something other than small flirty quips and hesitant touches whenever Bucky hands the blonde his coffee.

 

The problem was that Bucky doesn’t _want_ to be in a relationship. He was perfectly fine with living life by himself. His ancestors use to get along just fine without needing a man in their life — the only men in his family in the last two centuries have been other witches from covens that respect a matriarchy, and even then, the women only married the men who understood their independence and strength. Most women in his coven were single, some expecting babies from donors rather than husbands or boyfriends. The whole point of worshipping Mother Gaia was that women inherit the Earth, and men and women needed to both work together to achieve utopia in a cleaner, greener Earth.

 

It doesn’t stop his mother from elbowing him at family dinners, smirking with red painted lips and flowers woven into her hair in a ceremonial crown, resting her chin in her palm and asking, “ _When are you bringing a handsome witch home, darling?_ ”. It only goated Becca on, bouncing in her seat and going on about how she couldn't wait to help plan a Gaia-blessed wedding.

 

The last time Bucky was in a committed relationship, the bastard killed him in a clearing and he had to be reanimated by his best friend, Wanda, as they sobbed in relief and fear. He’s been on dates since then, but it felt like there was something holding him back from genuinely liking men. They all looked the same to him — all young men with only eyes on sex or trying too hard to impress Bucky with brands that he never really cared for. The last guy he liked even a little had an aversion to cats and Bucky will be damned if he ever picked a man over his familiar.

 

For now, he’ll look forward to the softness of their dance every Tuesday that commenced and ended with the dinging of the bell on the door.

* * *

The best part about being a witch was being able to sense others around him. Humans had a newer, glossy kind of aura that reminded Bucky of buying something new at a very adored shop. They would always smell like citrus and rosemary to him, artificial in the way of how their early ancestors turned down anything relating to magic for millenia. Other witches, however, bore their aura and scent in a flurry of musky, rich tones that would be associated with a fresh hike in the mountains in the early morning. Some had faint hints of smells that are associated with their covens, but for the most part, it was a way of survival to know who one could truly trust.

 

Needless to say, the moment that Wanda walked through the door of their shop, Bucky instantly knew who it was.

 

Her chestnut curls cascaded down her shoulders, bouncing along with her hips as she approached the counter with a giant grin on her pale face. “Hiya, Jamie,” she said, tapping the counter with her nails. The rings on her fingers clinked together, gold catching the limited sunlight coming in from the open windows, and the male witch recognized some of them as being protection and power rings associated with wiccan magic. “Long time, no see,”

 

Bucky smiled wide enough that he could feel his face split into two. “It’s been too long, Wanda,” he said, grabbing a cup to start preparing her favorite drink at the cafe; an iced mocha with a shot of chocolate, “How was Sokovia?”

 

Wanda shrugged with one shoulder, her ruby lips turning up into a smirk. “My family can be fickle, but Grandmother’s Will was pretty explicit,” Her eyes roamed the customers in the shop briefly, spotting only the couple in the corner sat facing the window and too engrossed in their conversation to pay attention. Slowly, she brought her fingers up to eye level, snapped her fingers together, and a card appeared between the two digits. It was sleek, matte black with glossy white text. “Pietro and I own the soap shop now. Exclusively for witches, of course,” she winked at him, handing the card to him, “We do international, too,”

 

“You guys have anything for finding new Netflix shows?” he asked, taking the card in both hands and moving it to watch the light move over the glossy cursive words. Both names of the twins were written in a dry brush script, their social media, phone number, and address were in a type writer font. The back had only a sigil of peace — one that Bucky remembered carving into dirt with a stick back when they were young and hopeful of a better tomorrow.

 

Wand ignored him, whistling as she gazed upon the menu. “Lot’s to pick from. Do you guys have anything for protection?” she hummed, flicking her eyes toward Peter and Sharon sweeping and chatting among themselves. Bucky winced, and the Scarlet Witch closed her mouth with a click. “Not that kind of shop, then,”

 

“The owner is magic,” Bucky whispered, using his hand to cover the side of his lips, “Never met her, but the place reeked of something … I think she knows I’m a witch, that’s why she’d never shown herself,”

 

“A magic-owned shop without magic? How do you st-”

 

The bell dinged behind the brunette woman, snapping both their attentions toward the front door. Bucky couldn’t help the smile that forced his way onto his face when he recognized the grey, tight, athletic shirt over his hard chest and the navy sweatpants that did nothing to mask the ample shape of his ass. Hot Blonde Guy stood by the door, panting slightly and pushing his bangs out of his damp forehead when his brilliant blue eyes found their way to Bucky’s. Wanda whistled lowly, sliding over to the side as the blonde approached them with a crooked grin and slight swagger that almost made Bucky weak in the knees. He threw a smile Wanda’s way, waving his hand to mimic the other witch, then proceeded to look at Bucky like he was an old friend he hadn’t seen in years.

 

“I didn’t mean to interrupt,” he said earnestly, holding his hands up, “I can wait for you guys to finish ta-”

 

“Oh, aren’t you just the sweetest?” Wanda piped up, overly cheery in a way that Bucky had only ever seen twice before: once when they first met and Wanda was trying hard to build a relationship based on common interests, and again they found out her long-term boyfriend was cheating on her with a member of her dance team in high school. It was hard to figure out if it was used for good or great evil, and he was leaning more towards the latter. “I’m going to go pick out a pastry. Careful, dear, you might be sweet enough to join the apple fritters,”

 

With a squeak of her sneakers, Wanda vanished from sight to stand as far from the two as she could, giving him a thumb’s up when he caught her eyes in an exasperated sigh. So much for subtle. The man, on the other hand, didn’t seem to mind as much as the witch. He chuckled, turning his attention back to Bucky, “Your sister?” he asked, quirking up an eyebrow when Bucky let out a sudden laugh.

 

“Hell, no,” he chuckled, reaching for the paper cups to his left, “She’s my best friend. Been with me through some hard times,”

 

“I get that. It’s been a while since I’ve had a friend like that,” the man smiled, looking over at the other witch as she tapped her fingers on the glass like an impatient child deciding what treat to get after school. He turned back to Bucky, “Hang on to her, pal, you never know what might happen,”

 

Considering the fact that Wanda had a gift that most witches don’t that allowed her to manipulate energy and objects to her liking without even so much as uttering a spell, Bucky didn’t think he had to be too weary of her well-being. She’s proven time and time again that Wanda Maximoff was capable of defending herself better than Bucky could, each time being more humiliating than the last as adulthood smacked into the brunnette harder than he thought. He doesn’t know what he’d do if Wanda were to suddenly disappear from his life. Becca and Wanda were everything to him.

 

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, scribbling a star onto the side of the cup, “What can I get you today, stranger?”

 

“I was hoping for something new. Any recommendations?” his fingers tapped on the counter idly, smirking shyly in a way that reminded Bucky a lot of his neighbor’s golden retriever. Bucky hummed for a moment, turning to look at the chalkboard that Peter updated this morning. “Uh, nothing new since last week. We’ll probably get some more once Sa- Halloween … rolls around,”

 

“That’s a shame,” his eyes widened, “I mean, the other stuff I’ve tried is really great. It’s really, _really_ great. I’ve had a hard time sleeping since … anyway, my friend said to try something pumpkin flavored for fall,”

 

“I know what you mean. We sell pumpkin spice around this time, but I think we’re trying something different this year. I’ll let you know next week if we have something new,” Bucky smiled, tilting his head towards the bakery goods behind the display glass decorated to the brim with flowers. They’ve been around since May, but, as a Temple of Gaia member, he couldn’t let them die off. His boss hasn’t complained about it, so he figured she didn’t mind the outdated flowers. “We do have caramel apple turnovers. They’re fresh out of the oven,”

 

“That sounds … great. I’ll have one of those and a cup of coffee,” the blonde winked, pulling out his wallet. Bucky rattled off the total, and accepted the bills handed to him. With his back turned towards the other man, he filled the coffee almost to the brim from the machine and inhaled the smell of the coffee beans filling his senses. He didn’t particularly care for hot coffee, but he loved the smell that encased the entire cafe like a warm hug. Hell, he wouldn’t mind making a pot in the morning just to have the smell in the house.

 

He looked over his shoulder and found the man looking out the window with his eyebrows pinched, lost in something outside that took his attention from Bucky for a moment. He acted fast, popping the cork off of the vial he took from home and smuggled in his apron to work. The potion was simple, easy, and quick to make with all-natural ingredients. A wisp of smoke fluttered around the top of the cup, silvery mist sparkling in the air before him before settling back into the drink. The coffee swirled, glittery and sparkling with every roll of the liquid as he stirred it with a popsicle stick.

The witch  turned around, smiling at the stranger. “Here you go. I’ll have them heat up that turnover for you in a minute,”

 

The blonde smiled into his drink, taking a slow sip. He moaned softly at the taste, blissfully closing his eyes with a dopey smile. It’s a relaxant, so fingers-crossed that he’ll be able to make it home before letting sleep overcome him. “Thanks, Buck,”

 

“Don’t mention it … pal,” Bucky finished lamely. There was a groan from a little obnoxious witch to his left that he politely ignored, his smile becoming harder to keep on his face. The blonde chuckled, his eyes wrinkling at the corners as he dropped a few cents into Bucky’s tip jar.

 

“It’s Stephen … Stephen Grant. I probably should’ve told you a while ago, huh?”

 

“We all have our secrets, no worries,” this time, it was Bucky’s turn to wink. He could feel Becca whine from second-hand embarrassment and she wasn’t even here, _that’s_ how fucking awkward he was. He couldn’t wait to crawl into his covers after his shift and stay there for all eternity, content with the fact that he will never, ever get to have an interaction as disastrous as that. Bucky opened his mouth to say something else, but a squeak from behind the display drew both their attentions to Wanda and Peter.

 

“Dude, get your weird friend under control! She almost _bit_ me,”

 

“Oh, calm down. It wasn’t even that _hard,”_

 

Bucky sighed, turning to say his final goodbye to the blonde – _Stephen,_ oh dear Gaia – but the man was already gone with the small psalm of the bell ringing over the door. He forgot his caramel apple turnover on the counter, stuffed into blue and brown bag with the name of the cafe on top. Fuck, he wasn’t _that_ weird, was he? He was cute while it lasted though.

 

Wanda moved over to the coffee counter, biting into a blueberry muffin that he absolutely knew she didn’t pay for. Her eyebrow arched, tapping the paper bag with her finger to bring Bucky’s attention towards the abandoned pastry on his counter. “What happened? You look like you just saw a ghost,” she asked, screwing her face in confusion. She barely got another bite in before the air started to smell of dew and livestock, the spiciness of salt water hitting their senses like a ton of bricks. Wanda gagged around her muffin, bringing her shirt up and over her nose. “Or something worse,”

 

The door chimed again, and this time Bucky couldn’t hide his grimace at the stench that followed the young woman in. It didn’t take a genius to know _what_ just walked in, disguised as a human with red curls that bounced with every step and her boots tracked in mud on the floor that Peter just spent the entire morning cleaning. Dressed in a green dress and a flannel, the fae marched up to the counter with a twisted expression on her freckled face.

 

“Shite, you smell like fucking decay,” she spat out, thick with an Irish accent that could rival Wanda’s Sokovian. She rubbed her nose, flashing Bucky her layers of rings and medallions.

 

Wanda made an angry and offended noise from under her shirt, squinting at the fae. “Oh, that’s rich. Christ, you ever heard of — oh, I don’t know — deodorant? Body spray? Rolling around in horse shit?”

 

The fae snapped her fingers, and Wanda’s muffin was suddenly a fat mushroom in her hands. Bucky was quick to throw his washcloth at the newcomer, eyes darting across the restaurant to make sure no one saw and posted it on Yelp. He lowered his voice, “No magic. This is strictly human,” he said, keeping an eye on Peter as he began to scrub the floor behind the face with a Swiffer mop. “What can I get you?”

 

The woman rolled her eyes, digging into her messenger bag for what he assumed would be her wallet. She squinted up at the chalkboard of specials, then abandoned it to pop a lollipop in between her dusty pink lips. “Strictly human, my arse. Is that why you gave the lad a relaxation spell in his coffee?”

 

“Okay, first of all, it was a _potion._ Second of all, _keep your voice down,”_ he gritted out quietly, still glancing around to make sure no one was near them. The fae snorted, waving her hand in the air in a dismissive gesture. “Whatever. Give me a coffee with as much lavender as you can fit in there,”

 

 _Lavender_ in food wasn’t something that Bucky was accustomed to hearing about. Sure, people liked to experiment with lavender and honey or lemon, often times coming up with sweets or teas that he absolutely thought was genius. But it was rare he ever got a request for lavender in their coffee. Well, unless …

 

“Are you in danger?” he whispered, leaning closer to the fae. Wanda stood a fair distance away, yet still close enough to listen to whatever answer the other woman gave. The redhead’s jaw tightened, and she sighed harshly through her nose.

 

“My fairy circle was broken last night,” she said, her piercing emerald eyes trained on some of the customers still lingering from the morning rush, “I bless it every morning and every night, okay? Whatever broke the protection barrier is coming and I don’t want to be caught with my pants down,”

 

Wanda’s face grew pale, and her grip on the mushroom started to turn it rotten, mold sprouting randoming on the surface as it conceived in her hand. With wide eyes, she turned to Bucky, “Shit. That’s probably why my spell jars had cracks in them this morning,” she shook her head, “If that isn’t an omen, I don’t know what is,”

 

“Something is coming, alright, and it isn’t going to do us any favors. I suggest doubling your protection spells. Whatever it is, it’s after magic folk,”

 

Bucky sighed, grabbing the turnover and sliding it towards the fae. Her eyes remained on him, drumming her nails on the counter with a slight tremor that they all either didn’t notice or ignored.

 

Faes were widely known for being one of the most ruthless of magic folk in the world, small and quick, they have lead more unfortunate bastards to their death than any other in history. They liked mischief and rituals, deals and bargains with anyone willing to listen to what they had to say. Play by my rules, and no one gets hurt. They were small in their native form with wings that spanned even bigger than their entire bodies, but what they lack in size, they make up for in horror. Last time Bucky heard of some idiot who dared to stomp out all the mushrooms and acorns in a fairy circle, his body was discovered three days later in a creek with chunks missing.

 

If a fae was terrified, then it must be really bad.

 

Bucky whipped up her coffee as soon as possible, handing it to her with a copious amount of lavender he could get his hands on. A few plants outside did suffer, but it spared him the pain of listening to the fae complain about lavender again. He plastered on a fake smile and handed it over, Wanda never letting the woman out of her sight when she turned her heel and whispered to them, “I’d be extra careful if I were you. We all know how witches get when hunters start to come snooping around. I’d hate to see that pretty little face on the obituaries,”

 

He stopped listening to her, handing her drink wordlessly and stared at the apple turnover on the counter just begging to be eaten by someone, anyone. There, in the blank space between the bag design, were seven digits followed by a smiley face written in blue ink.

 

So happy that his heart could burst, Bucky smiled.

* * *

“Did you know NYU has an entire class on witchcraft and hexes?” Becca said, her smile audible even through the phone, “$10 says that all it talks about is Satanic witchcraft and rhyming spells,”

 

Flipping the switch in his apartment, Bucky winced at the sound of the train rushing by just a few blocks from his place. His place wasn’t big or luxurious, but he didn’t mind it. It was standard with a living room and adjacent kitchen, a door to his room and another to the bathroom. His window sill was filled with crystal and plant-life, flourishing under the sunlight that filtered through the apartment and perking up whenever he watered them. His altar was positioned in the corner of his room, out of sight from anyone that visited.

 

Sabrina wrapped around his legs, nuzzling his pants as she purred deep in her body. Her tail flickered lightly, her ear twitching as she looked up at him. “ _Welcome home,”_

 

Bucky grunted in reply, gnawing at his thumb nail while setting his backpack down. The light was fleeing in the early evening, and if he hoped to give a little prayer before bed, he was going to have to charge his pocket spell jar. The black cat watched him move like a predator, wiggling her body and taking soft, inaudible steps on the hardwood floors. “ _You reek of fae,”_ she mused, squinting at him with a slight warning chirp, “ _Tell Rebecca I said hello,”_

 

“Sabrina says hi,” he muttered into his phone, ignoring the squeal of excitement that Becca gave in turn.

 

“Tell her I said hi back,” she said, the sound of her bed springs chiming over the phone, “Are you okay?”

 

“I’m fine,”

  


“Dude, I’ve known you since you were born. I can tell when you’re lying,” Becca hissed, “What’s up?”

 

Bucky sighed through his nose, setting his small jar on the sill and bending down to inspect his iris stems. They perked up as he got closer, the shy buds peeling a petal one by one to test the waters. Their violet hue always gave his collection an elegant pop of color among the sea of green and yellow. Fuck, he wished he were a flower. “Really, it’s nothing. Just a rumor going around,”

 

“Nope,” she sang, “Try again,”

 

Gaia, she’s good. “Can you do another reading for me?”

 

Becca didn’t reply, but he knew the answer to the question. The next few sounds over the telephone were of Becca opening up a wooden box, the sharp _thick_ of its lid was loud enough to make Sabrina’s ear twitch. She moved around her room silently, gathering her cards and candles and the clicking of her lighter, before she finally came back to her phone with a smile in her voice. “What do you want to know?”

 

The male witch leaned against the wall next to his small garden of flowers and crystals, ignoring the white paint that chipped around the trim of the window and the water damage from the leak on the very top where the seam of the ceiling met the wall. He touched the tip of his finger on the velvet soft petal of his succulent and watched as his sunflowers swayed slightly in glee at the sliver of sunshine shining through the dark clouds above.

 

“How do the cards feel about me and the guy from the coffee shop?” he asked, a lopsided smile etching on his face as the image of Stephen appeared in his head. In his mind, Stephen smiled at him from across the cafe, looking up from his phone as he sipped his coffee, his eyes trailing up and down Bucky’s form as if he were one of the fresh pastries in the display. He would strut right up to the counter, lean against the wood with a grin as he winked at Bucky with a sly comment about dinner and a date, smelling faintly of the latest cologne to market. It’s a fantasy that he might’ve thought about once or twice when at work.

 

“Oh, I thought there _wasn’t_ any guy,” she said, the cards scuffing against one another as she shuffled them in her calloused hands, no doubt balancing the phone between her shoulder and ear, “Don’t tell me that you’re starting to come around to _love,_ Mr. Barnes,”

 

“Fuck, Becca, I’m paying you to read cards, not poke around at my love life,” he hissed, but both siblings knew there wasn’t any venom behind the words. His sister loved him, she wanted the best for him, he _knows._ It just felt like something he shouldn’t be talking about with her – an untouchable subject that she was too pure and young to even touch upon.

 

She was only just entering junior high at the time when the incident in the woods happened, her hair so straight from spending twenty minutes straightening it every morning and her fingers permanently glued to a new scab that she insisted needed to be picked at. Her knees always had bruises from playing soccer with her friends, some of whom loved her so much that they had to immortalize that bond with carefully threaded, colorful bracelets taking up a good chunk of her forearm. Becca was young enough to still get passed for twelve, huffing and puffing whenever he made her lie about her age just to score free food whenever they went out somewhere together with Wanda and Pietro.

 

All she knew about that day was her brother coming home a wreck with tears still streaming down his face and his clothes tattered with dried blood all around the front. Twigs and leaves embedded in his hair like a witch who dwelled in the forest from the stories their grandmother would tell while standing over a cauldron. Winifred Barnes sent her straight to her room, throwing her homework off the kitchen table and into her black Jansport backpack with an urgency that only got worse when Bucky stuttered in a breath against the breasts of his grandmother.

 

She found out bits and pieces of the incident over the years and understood the basics of what happened. The issue wasn’t that she knew the grizzly bits of a love story turned Grimm fairytale, but that she can't possibly imagine the terror that courses through a body – human or magical – when confronted with reality of a final death. The way the body and mind lost all semblance of civility and regressed back into its primal state of heart-stopping terror. There was no running, no hiding, no _breathing._ All he could do was watch the event unfold before him as if he was a statue, frozen in place by stone and forced to know that he was helpless towards the end of his life.

 

That’s what he wanted to shield Becca from.

 

“It’s … complicated,” he finally got out, picking the chipped paint from the wall, “His name is Stephen Grant, by the way,”

 

Becca accepted the answer with a hum, then got back to scuffling and mixing her cards to the beat of what he just realized was Hozier’s voice lulling around his sister’s room like a cloud of light. He didn’t know _when_ his baby sister started listening to his music, especially since she insisted that magic folk can’t possibly make good music, but what kind of a brother would he be if he didn’t roast her in that very moment.

 

“Are … are you listening to Brigid?”

 

“So what if I am?” she asked, the sounds of cards flipping loud enough to hear over the voice of the man crackling from her record player, “He makes good music and humans like him a lot,”

 

“Yeah, but Becs,” he started, “He’s a _God_. Humans just think he’s a forest nymph or something as a joke, they don’t actually think he’s really something magic,”

 

“Gaia’s left tit, Bucky, let me enjoy something other than Stevie Nicks!” the young woman sighed heavily, muttering under her breath, “You might’ve been right about magic folk. Some of our bastards can really sing about whatever they want and humans think they’re joking,”

 

“People still think Lupita Nyong'o is just _some actress_ ,” the witch mused, nodding along to Becca’s squeal of agreement. The humans – from what he knew – had a very good sense of detection. They know when something wasn’t human, just from being around something physically humanoid. Be it the subtle differences compared to humans or their prey mentality taking over, he was convinced that humans knew more than they really let on. They’ve suspected Florence Welsh to be a fae for a long time now, swearing she were the Messiah of indie music because of her soft voice and angelic features. They’ve hypothesized that Keanu Reeves was a fucking vampire when everyone knew he was just an older forgotten demigod that longed to live as carefree as he once use to. They’re detection of humans wasn’t as sophisticated as that of magical folk, but it was damn near close.

 

“Xochiquetzal always did like being the center of att-” Becca stopped mid-sentence, her breath hitching, “Hey, dude, did you say his name was Stephen Grant?”

 

“Yeah, why?”

 

The medical major sucked in a sharp breath, her voice low when she said, “I got nothing here. It’s just … nothing,”

 

“Well, you tried, that’s what ma-”

 

“No. James, there’s literally nothing. My cards are completely white,” she said, “Aunt Ida said that it might’ve just been a fluke with my cards, but this is grandma’s set. What the _fuck_ is going on?”

 

“I don’t know,” his head started to hurt like a motherfucker, pounding at his skull like a tiny person hammering away at his bone relentlessly. The panicked pitched in his sister’s voice made it worst, but he persisted. “Did it say anything before it turned to nothing? At all?”

 

Becca was quiet, then she spoke. “I’m sorry, bro,”

 

It was all she said on the matter for the rest of the night after Bucky changed the subject to her schooling, doing his best to not let the stray tear fall away and down his cheek.

 

He was _so_ fucking stupid to believe that he could actually have someone interested in him. _Of course._ Stephen probably saw what a huge fucking loser he was, working as a barista at his age with his only friend being a chick in all black who obsessed over the blueberry muffins. He was attractive, yes, but what else did Bucky have to offer? His magic was average at best as they were linked completely to his emotions, entirely useless when you’ve conditioned yourself to school each and every emotion you have. Having feelings and a life full of exciting choices were meant for people like Rebecca that took life by the balls and controlled her faith like a game where she was reigning champion. They weren’t for a reanimated corpse, moving around in the real world yet still fucking obsessing over something that happened years ago. He wasn’t anything near what Stephen was hoping for, not when the face he puts on at the coffee shop isn’t 100% his own.

 

And he wasn’t fucking blind, okay, he knew flirtation when he saw it. Stephen had been flirting with him for _weeks,_ always winking and grinning at him as if he were the only man in the entire known universe. He didn’t deny that there might be a sliver of attraction there, what with the weekly visits and great mood whenever he entered the small cafe. The problem was that Stephen was going to get _bored._ They always got bored of the witch eventually. He wasn’t meant to be someone that people immediately attached to, he wasn’t like Becca in the regard that he was so famously sought out for companionship that people were fighting on who would tie the bracelet around his wrist first.

 

In twenty-three years, the only friends Bucky had made and retained were Wanda, Sabrina, and his own fucking baby sister. Even then, one could argue that Sabrina was forced to be around him because they depended on each other for protection and power, and Becca was technically family, not a friend. By the Grace of Gaia, Wanda stuck around for a while longer than anyone else. One day, she’ll leave too without so much as a goodbye and then Bucky would truly, authentically be alone in the world with no one but his cat and sister.

 

Sabrina scowled at him when the cork of the wine bottle found deep in his cabinet gave, popping loudly in the cramped apartment. The black feline shook her head, the bell on her collar ringing with the motion. “ _Don’t you think it’s a little early for that?”_ she sniped at him, licking her paw with her rough pink tongue and glaring at him with her deep green eyes. Her tail flickered.

 

“It’s five o’clock somewhere,” he muttered at her, pouring himself a hearty amount of the deep alcohol into a black mug that was chipped at the handle and read ‘Normal People Scare Me’, a gag gift from Becca that he didn’t have the heart to throw away. He set the bottle down, groaning as his familiar hopped onto the counter with a graceful jump and walking like a luxurious show animal. “C’mon, Sabrina, I’ve had a long day,”

 

 _“Yes. Flirting with a handsome stranger is rather exhausting, I would imagine,”_ she said, “ _Hopefully, this means you’ll stop sneaking potions into the coffee shop,”_

 

“What are you? My mom?” he groaned. He took a long swing from his mug, downing the sweet and intoxicating wine without even a second to breathe. It all went down smoothly, giving him a pleasant headrush when he opened his eyes to find Sabrina staring at him in disappointment. He went to grab the bottle again, but was stopped by a paw batting his hand away. “Sabrina!”

 

“ _You have school tomorrow morning,”_ she reminded him, her paw still hanging mid air in case he tried to grab the wine again, “ _Need I remind you that you’re a notorious lightweight?”_

 

He frowned. Reaching into his pocket, Bucky pulled out the business card that Wanda handed to him mere hours prior to the whole fucking mess, his thumb moving to feel the different texture of the card. Not looking up from the card, Bucky smirked and said, “You’re such a buzzkill, Sabrina. Maybe you should go help out Wanda with the shop,”

 

With a snap of his fingers, the card and Sabrina disappeared in an instant. He was free of her judgemental eyes for at least a few hours, giving him enough time to get good and drunk before the black cat found her way back in through the amount of salt and sigil he has hanging at every entrypoint. Tonight, Bucky was finally giving in to whatever his heart desired. No more using his magic conservatively, biding each and every problem with deep thought before deciding it isn’t worth using magic on. No more pretending his magic was just an extra tool he rarely used, instead of cherishing the way the feeling of butterflies under his skin whenever he used magic.

 

He smiled, poured himself more wine, and grabbed an apple from the bowl he just refilled. Fat, red, and shiny, Bucky looked at it as if it were made of glass before taking a juicy bite out of its side.

 

Immediately, the brunette spat the piece out of his mouth onto the floor and looked at the apple in horror. The inside had turned to mush with mold covering the walls of the apple like a blanket of green snow, moving and pulsating with maggots burrowing deeper into the once abundant source of nutrients.

 

He ignored it, throwing the whole thing into the trash and then dropping a heavy bowl on top of it. It impacted with a satisfying _crunch,_ and Bucky hoped to Gaia it was just the sound of the outer layer of the apple, and not of something bigger than the maggots lurking under the bed of mold.

 

An hour and half a bottle of wine later, Bucky chuckled to himself in his hazy state as he flipped through the pages of his Grimoire. His finger traced the ancient text on the parchment until he came across the section he so desperately wanted. The witch was curious, alright? Maybe if he could make another potion for Stephen, he’ll be grateful enough to drop to his knees and beg you to get him out on a date.

 

Finally, hidden deep in the book protected by two other spells, Bucky found the potion he was looking for. Written in a fitting pink ink, the title of the page was loopy and neat, seductive yet aesthetically elegant in a way that only an ancestor could’ve done in high society Russia. It was old with stains from water damage and tears on the edges, but the artwork was lovely as it showed a simple bottle with pink liquid and a misty heart-shape coming out of it.

 

_Cupid’s Arrow._

 

But wait. He couldn’t just ... hand the vile of pink goop to Stephen. No one in their right mind would just so blindly accept something that looks like a thin layer of paint. He’d have to mix it into something to get Stephen to take it, but what?

 

Pink lemonade was far too peachy in hue to mask the deep pink of the potion, and it was too powerful to be masked in the coffee like so many of the other potions he’s given the blonde before. He needed something inconspicuous, something that he could slip the drink into without raising too much suspicion like a … a …

 

A cupcake. Colorful enough that the bright pink would go unnoticed, topped with sweet icing the cover up the flavor of bitter hibiscus, and innocent looking enough that no one would suspect anything out of the ordinary. Hell, he hasn’t baked in a while since last Winter Solstice. What better way than to start now to prepare for the holiday season and its traditional baking? Bucky still has his cook book that Wanda gave him for his birthday, it could use some love.

 

Using his magic, Bucky summoned the cookbook form the shelf to float over to him and land just next to the Grimoire. His finger flicked in the air, opening the cover and flipping the pages. The flavor had to be strong enough to diffuse the potion. He moved the pages until he held his hand up, ceasing the flipping and landing on a page on how to make a chocolate-covered strawberry cupcake with champagne.

 

Perfect.

* * *

 

Ethel Barnes, current Supreme of the Northern American coven, always had a soft spot for family. She loved her grandchildren dearly, spending as much time as possible around them in the kitchen to teach them small traditions that witches must never forget.

It was things like singing when cutting fruit to ensure it was always sweet, or boiling cloves in the cauldron after use to cleanse it thoroughly. It was things that have been passed down their bloodline for hundreds and hundreds of years, dating back to the other legends of witches hiding in the Russian snow like ghosts silhouetted in the distance.

 

One particular thing that Ethel always warned Bucky and Becca as kids was to never, _ever_ use dark magic.

 

Any magic that manipulated the intentions of an unknowing party was forbidden in their coven, and has been since the days of Salem. In the eyes of Gaia, nothing bad would befall you for using such magic, but the thing was that that type of magic was often frickle. The same way a genie could take a wish literally to get a rise out of the one making the wish, dark magic had a way with backfiring horribly again you.

 

Maybe Bucky should’ve paid closer attention to that part of grandma’s visits.

 

\--

 

Sabrina’s chirp was the first thing Bucky heard the next morning when he woke up. Her slick body was perched delightfully on his night stand, glancing down at the cup of water to his side. The light from the window blinded him, sending shockwaves of pain behind his eyes. His mouth tasted like a wad of cotton, crusted at the corners with dried drool. Fuck, _fuck,_ how much did he drink last night?

 

“ _Enough,”_ Sabrina hissed, batting the air near Bucky. “ _You’re lucky that you were stupid enough to cast a temporary spell. The moment you fell asleep, I was back here. Wanda said you owe her a muffin from the cafe,”_

 

The young man groaned, wiping his face with his hand as he stared at the ceiling above him. He recalls drinking maybe three times in his life; once when he was fourteen and snuck a bottle of his mother’s gin in his room, the second time at a party where his first and last boyfriend kept feeding him watered-down beer, and the third being last night. He was a lightweight, worst than he’s ever heard of and a part of him is grateful for the hesitant to drink, but he regretted not being able to drink freely like he’s seen by the very few people from his high school on his Snapchat. Besides, even if he wasn’t a lightweight, Sabrina was always there to bother the fuck out of him.

“My head is splitting,”

 

_“Too bad. You have class in a few hours and you need to go pick up your paycheck,”_

 

Bucky groaned again, wincing as he sat up to take the glass of water from next to his familiar. He felt incredibly miserable, tears springing to his eyes as a delayed reaction to the events of last night. He was pathetic and he knew it, barely getting the energy to get out of bed to go to school.

 

His familiar must’ve heard what he was thinking because Sabrina didn’t say anything else, jumping off the table into his lap and nuzzling his stomach with her soft head. He brought his hand up to smooth the hairs on her head, digging his nails behind her ear when she started to pur. “Hey. I love you, ‘Brina,”

 

_“I love you, too, you dick,”_

 

Springing to his feet, Bucky almost tethered to the side as the room rushed around him. Sabrina hopped off the bed and towards the open door to the living room, a black beacon in the early morning night to guide him around the room. A Wonder Woman mug sat on the counter filled to the brim with steaming water and the string of a tea bag draped over the top. Her dish was empty, resting at the bottom of the counter which almost got Bucky crying again. Here she was, setting out a mug of tea leaves with a cure to his hungover and didn’t even fill her own bowl up. Gaia on Earth, he was the biggest douchebag in the entire world.

He filled her dish to the brim with the wet food he bought last week as a treat for her, squatting next to her as she ate from the bowl with a ravenous hunger. Using the back of his hand, he pet from her head to her tail while sipping his tea before getting back up to get dressed. Passing by his flowers and plants, he didn’t notice the foul smell of decay and the rotting plants deprived of life. The once vivid and happy plants now laid concave on themselves,  thin and weak, as if something sucked the life right out of them and left nothing more than a shell of their former beauty.

* * *

Bucky wasn’t much of an athlete.

 

He never really liked sports that required more than passing a baseball to one another in his backyard as a kid, giggling with his sister whenever the ball went past her head and she had to run after it with a squeal of delight. He doesn’t run, or catch, or throw, or kick. He preferred to sit with his grandmother in his living room with a lapful of yarn, watching the old woman weave small dolls and amulets in complex ways that required a bit of magic to not lose her spot while sipping from her porcelain tea cups.

 

That being said, you’d imagine the amount of sheer effort it took for him to run as fast as he could to burst into the lecture hall for his engineering class, pushing aside those who walked too slow in front of him in his effort to get there within the next two minutes. He really should’ve waited until after his class to pick up his paycheck from the cafe and that muffin for Wanda, but he got cocky in his time management and after a good half hour of talking with Peter behind the counter, he was going to miss a good amount of his class. He thought he could just go home after class, lay in his bed, and shut out the world until he felt like a functioning witch again.  

 

If he were his sister, he would’ve poofed himself into the closest bathroom to the lecture hall and miss the entire workout. He could’ve used his magic to delay time just a little bit for him to gain some ground. He should’ve thrown caution to the wind and prayed to Gaia for a snowstorm in October to make even the professor late. Bucky had the power at his fingertips to make his life easier, but his fucking moral compass was too firm and believed that it would be _unfair_ to use his magic for personal gain.

 

Make a potion for a stranger in his cafe who looked a little too gloomy? No problem. Whisper a spell into his sister’s hair to protect her before leaving his mother’s house? Child’s play. Use an ounce of magic to get to class on time? Oh, no, Gaia forbid he even _dare_ to think of that.

 

 _Fuck_ witch guilt and _fuck_ his great grandmother for pounding that little mannerism into his psyche at a young age.

 

The worst part was that he actually did make it on time to class with three minutes to spare, sitting heavily in his usual seat with the carved picture of a ghost in the grain and the pen stain that has been there since the beginning of the year, only to realize he forgot his fucking messenger bag back at the cafe.

 

You know, his bag? The one containing his lecture notes, his pens, his sketches, his assignment that was due that day in class or risk getting a zero? Yeah, apparently, whatever it was that Peter was going on about on his internship at Stark Industries was far more important than remembering to grab his fucking backpack.

 

Bucky banged his forehead on the desk loud enough for the whole class to turn and stare at him, groaning deep in his throat for a long while before eventually checking out for the rest of the three hour lecture. He could grab the notes from someone else, sure, but his were written with a pen Becca gave him years ago when he first got accepted to Columbia. Enchanted with her first ever major spell, the pen’s ink had the ability to engrave the information into his mind and weed out the important bits for the exam. It was his favorite pen, despite the ball of pink fluff that Becca thought would give it an extra kick.

 

His day couldn’t get any worse.

* * *

“You did _what?!”_

 

Apparently, it could.

 

Peter stammered, his hands moving around as he tried to explain the situation to him without angering Bucky any more than he already was. His floppy brown hair moved with his every movement, hypnotic if not for the fact that the kid was the biggest fucking idiot second to Bucky. “Your bag got knocked over and when I went to pick it up, there was a container with Stephen’s name on it. I thought you were going to give it to him later so I just gave it to him when he walked in asking for you. I– I thought you _wanted_ to give him the cupcake?”

“Peter! It is really important that you tell me _right now_ what the cupcake looked like,”

 

The young man thought for a second, pinching his eyebrows and clenching his jaw. It was an agonizing while before he snapped his fingers, eyes wide as he remembered. “It was pink with chocolate frosting on it. And it had pink sprinkles! With a heart sprinkle on the top!” he recounted gleefully, but the smile slipped off his face as Bucky stormed out of the cafe with his messenger bag held tightly in his fist.

 

 _This._ This is why witches just can’t use their magic for whatever they pleased. Magic was ancient and using it like a crutch to make life easier will only complicate things in the long run. Black magic, specifically love potions, were banned by the Supreme for a fucking reason. The ones who took the potions almost never are able to consent to it, forcing them to feel things they don’t already to further someone else’s agenda and he just fucking … forced Stephen into having feelings for Bucky. He doesn’t _want_ someone to be forced into loving him. He wanted a gradual love, one build and nourished over time until you’ve reached the point in the relationship where you love the other so unconditionally, that it hurts sometimes. He’s been in love before, he knows how it hurts to have someone you thought love you turn around and stab you in the heart – literally.  

 

He dialed Becca’s number numbly, breathing heavily as he marched through the cold streets of Manhattan. The phone rang on her end, the long seconds dragging on for an eternity before simply going to her custom voicemail. He tried Wanda, and was also met with a voicemail box. No one was answering and he felt like his heart was about to rip out of his chest, leaving a gaping hole that could never be filled no matter how many resurrection spells was recited over him.

 

He realized again, for the second time in two days, that he was truly, one hundred percent alone.

* * *

 

Bucky hadn’t seen Stephen for a week now. At first, when Tuesday rolled around, the witch was ready to accept his fate.

 

Love potions were notorious for having an obsessive effect on those under the influence, ranging from complete destructive behaviour to excessive doting that often resulted in witches having to put down the person affected. It was never a good potion to use, especially in large quantities like Bucky did when making the cupcake. The potion isn’t even really meant for romantic love in the first place. According to his great grandmother, the potion originally was meant to lure men to dark witches for sacrifices back in the days when witches were split up into two categories: the ones who used magic for dark purposes, and the ones that used magic for good.

 

But he didn’t show up on Tuesday. He waited his entire shift for something out of the ordinary to happen, something entirely outlandish that he even managed to use an old summoning spell for Sabrina in case something went wrong. By four o’clock, Bucky was ready to punch out and there was no sighting of Stephen anywhere to be found. It was odd and scary to think of what he might be planning, if he was okay or had a bad reaction to the incantation.

 

The time that another Tuesday rolled around, Bucky’s paranoia receded back to the depths of his mind and he chalked it up as maybe Stephen hadn’t actually ate the cupcake after all. A rational person would’ve thrown it away, sending it down a trashcan to never be seen again and save themselves the pain of whatever the loon put in it in the first place.

 

Then Stephen walked in with a huge grin and Bucky was ready to stab the motherfucker, worst case scenario.

 

The man before him strutted in with a shy grin that made Bucky’s insides twist in fear, his usual glee at seeing Stephen walk in completely gone now with the knowledge that the man might’ve be there to kill him. He didn’t let the tension in his body show, choosing to smile stiffly at the blonde man as he strutted toward the counter. “Good morning,” he hummed, pocketing his hands in his jacket. “A latte, please,”

 

Bucky blinked. “Just … just the latte?”

 

“Yeah. I have a long day ahead of me,”

 

“Sure, no problem,”

 

The process of making the coffee lasted all of two minutes, all of which had Stephen staring down at his phone with a slight pinch to his eyebrows and his fingers moving around the screen lightning fast. Bucky glanced over his shoulder briefly, hoping that Stephen wouldn’t catch his eye. There was nothing stopping the man from choking the brunnette out when he had his back turned to him, but nothing happened. Usually, the text was very clear about the obsession and dangers of using the potion.

 

“Oh, by the way,” the tall man said, “Thank you for that cupcake. It was really good, you have a gift,”

 

Bucky smiled in turn, laughing softly as he continued to make the beverage. He thanked the man, but deep down, his stomach was started to claw at his insides. He did eat it, and yet there was nothing to suggest that the man was under the influence of the cupcake.

 

He gave the coffee to the blonde, his eyes searching the other man's face for anything different and only got a weird look in turn. Stephen laughed nervously, taking the coffee from Bucky’s hand and giving him the crumpled dollars into his hand. “I’ll, uh, see you next week,” and with that, he was out the door without even a final look.

 

Peter suddenly appeared next to him, the handle of the broom pressed against his cheek as he stared at the same direction as the witch. “See? It wasn’t that bad,” he mused, smiling at the witch. The witch nodded, gaping at the door where the man just walked out of.

 

If he thought that was the worst thing to come out of that week, he was sorely wrong.

* * *

Bucky preferred morning shifts to the night ones, mainly because he got to interact more with the customers and didn’t have to close out the restaurant all by himself. The only closing shift he had was on Friday’s, and this particular one was on a night where the moon was almost non-existent among the heavy rain clouds that rolled over the dark New York sky.

 

The pastries were still baking in the oven, the scent of sweet apricot marmalade filling the entire cafe. The witch was just about to work on washing all the utensils used during the day, thinking back on the events that the transpired during the day. It didn’t make sense, and he hoped that Wanda or Becca would come around to helping him decide on what to do whenever they got a chance. He briefly considered taking Grandma Ethel out to brunch the next morning, already mentally thinking of what bistro to take her to when the bell over the front door rang in the silence of the kitchen. He sighed, pinching his nose. Fuck, did he forget to turn the sign over when he locked the door? “Sorry, we’re closed!” he called out, peering over the window of the kitchen to look into the empty cafe.

 

There was no one there.

 

He sniffed the air subtly, scratching his head when he didn’t catch any whiff of magical or human in the room. It might’ve been his imagination. It happened sometimes when he got home after a long day of work and he thought he heard the sound of the bell of the cafe chiming, the sound engraved into his brain after a long day. Bucky thought back to the day and chalked it up as being a big rush towards the end of the day, probably imagining the sound. He turned back around to get back to work, and his heart stopped.

 

The world tilted to the right, the edges of his vision plunging into darkness and the figure before him silhouetted against the blurring of his surroundings. His mind and body reacted accordingly, his terror gripping both in an iron fist as he could do nothing else but stand there staring at the man in front of him.

 

Bucky would know that face anywhere. He’s seen it laugh into his neck while making out in a movie theatre, watched the subtle lines of his features when concentrating on video games, been wrapped up tight in those arms to shut out the world around them on nights when it felt like the sky was as infinite as their love. The man smirked, and Bucky’s heart stopped.

 

“Long time, no see, babe,” Brock Rumlow purred, his scarred face reflected by the moon light seeping through the window. The man had aged significantly since the last time Bucky saw him, his wrinkled and scarred appearance jarring the witch into flinching back when he took a step forward. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you miss me?”

 

“You’re supposed to be dead,” Bucky snapped, snarling at the other man. His back hit the counter where he was just baking, flour sticking to his shirt and his hands becoming caked with butter, but it was as far as he could go from Brock.

 

“Funny,” Brock laughed, “I could say the same for you,” He took a step closer.

 

Bucky snatched a knife from the sheath closest to him, aiming the tip towards the other man even if his palm started to sweat and make the handle slippery. He tightened his grip. “Yeah, well, seems I’m pretty immune to death,”

 

“Or more like your little friend resurrected you,” Brock spat, moving closer with his gun pointed directly at the young witch’s face. “Took me a while to finally track you down. You don’t use magic much, do you?” when the brunette didn’t reply, Brock continued. “Oh, you think I didn’t know you’re a witch? I’ve trained my entire life to track you disgusting things down,”

 

“You …”

 

“That’s right, _doll,”_

 

A fucking witch hunter. Of all the fucked up things this world has to offer, it decided to throw a fucking witch hunter at him. He thought, for all these years, his murder was a crime of passion to the likes of Shakespeare. The years went on and the only solace that the witch ever had was in the fact that he romanticized his death as a symbol of bitter young love and it turns out after all this time, it was a fucking hit? He was murdered because some ancient dumbass started a cult dedicated to witch hunting and Bucky ended up picking on of those bastards as his boyfriend?

 

Bucky gritted his teeth, and he felt a surge in power in a way he’d never felt before. He was _not_ going to let this man decide his fate for a second time. Not now, not again when he was no longer blinded by the hazy cloud of love that he thought he felt for the man before him.

 

“What happened to your face?” Bucky asked, moving the knife behind him, “No one ever told me what happened to you after you killed me,”

 

Brock advanced towards the witch quickly, grabbing a fist full of his hair and brought it close enough so that the brunette was face to face with the older man. The gun bit into his chest, pressed hard enough that to actually hurt and possibly bruise. The man growled. “That fucking witch bitch of yours burned my face! She tied me to a stake and burned me alive. I got away, and now that I know where you two are, I’m going to do the same to her. But first, I have to get rid of the bitch that started it all,”

 

Bucky moaned in pain as Brock shook his head, tearing out a few strands. He grunted, his hand coming up to grab the barrel of the handgun tightly. “Well here’s something you should’ve learned after the first time,” he rasped, “You might’ve took me down, but you should’ve finished me off when you had the chance,”

 

Faster than Brock could process, Bucky dropped the knife and threw flour into his ex’s eyes. The gun under his hand turned into bubbles, disappearing into the air as Brock blinked lamely. The other man screamed, collapsing onto the counter and wiping his eyes angrily. He growled loudly, grabbing the knife, only to have it pulling out of his hands by Bucky’s magic.

 

Disarmed, Brock snarled at the witch. “God, I forgot how annoying you are,”

 

“I can’t believe I _ever_ dated you,” Bucky hissed back, holding the knife like a dagger. Brock started to run at the young witch again when a shot rang loudly in the shop and brought the man to his knees. The brunette looked back to find none other than fucking Captain America standing behind him in his red, white, and blue glory.

 

In fact, not only was Captain America standing in his shop with a gun pointed towards the deranged murderer, he was smiling at Bucky as if he were an old friend. The icon lowered the gun, rushing over to Brock to feel his neck with two fingers. “He’s alive,” he told the witch, kneeling on one knee and looking up at the brunnette with his ridiculously long lashes. “You’re lucky we were in the neighborhood,”

 

“You’re … uh, you’re … Captain America … right?” the witch stuttered, blinking hard to understand what the fuck was happening. One moment, he had a gun pointed at his chest and the next, Captain America was to the rescue.

 

“Yeah … sorry I didn’t tell you earlier,”

 

Then it all fucking came crashing in. Stephen Grant. What a fucking _dumbass._ Now that Bucky looked closer, he realized that Captain America wasn’t even wearing a helmet. He was clad in his usual uniform that Bucky had seen on the news, tight in the right places and hard in the more sensitive parts of his body in case of an assault. This entire time … Bucky had been flirting and making coffee for America’s Sweetheart, giving his potions to help him with the dark circles under his eyes.

 

Oh **_fuck_ ** _._

 

“I gave you a love potion,” he breathed, slamming his hand into his face and hitting his head with his palm. “I gave Captain America a fucking love potion,”

 

Stephen – _Steve_ – stood up from his spot next to the man on the floor, securing his hands behind his back with a zip tie along with his ankles. He raised an eyebrow towards the witch, confusion written all over his features. “What?”

 

So Bucky confessed. Everything. He told him about the murder, the omens that followed him around, getting hammered and making the potion, the mix-up with Peter actually giving it to him, and his powers. He thought the blonde man was going to have him committed, throw him to the ground and zip tie him too. There was no way this man was going to actually believe the witch. So you can imagine his surprise when Steve leaned down and brushed his lips again Bucky’s.

 

He had never been kissed like that before, like he was something meant to be treated gently and with as much affection as possible. There was no haste, no mauling of the lips like it use to be when he was younger. This kiss … felt perfect. Steve’s body was warm against him, his calloused hands sending chills down his spine as they cupped his jaw. The captain’s own jaw was peppered with a five o’clock shadow yet it felt absolutely perfect against his mouth.

 

“It didn’t work, though,” the witch whispered when they finally pulled away, “The potion. It … it didn’t work,”

 

Steve chuckled, pressing his forehead against Bucky’s. “Maybe it didn’t work because I’m already attracted to you,” he smiled.

 

Bucky was just about to reply when a cough broke his train of thought. Their attention was brought over to the slender redhead woman that Bucky didn’t notice when Steve first walked in. Her hair was tied up into a french braid, coming to rest over her shoulder and her lips were painted a deep scarlet. She moved closer to them, folding her hands over her chest, and kicking Brock in the arm. “Christ, you guys really made a mess, huh?” she said neutrally, moving around the kitchen as if she was inspect it. “James, you might want to take a personal day tomorrow,”

 

“I’m sorry?”

 

“You’re terrible with faces,” she laughed, her lips smirking at him, “I own this cafe. I’m your boss,”

 

“Okay, well, I’m going to go bury myself in Central Park. I’ll catch you guys on the flipside,”

 

Steve grabbed him by the waist, laughing and swinging him back around so that he was holding the witch against him again. He kissed Bucky again, rubbing his cheek with his thumb in a way that made his knees absolutely weak. “Don’t do that. I won’t be able to kiss you if you do,”

 

Black Widow rolled her eyes, pulling Brock up when he groaned back to consciousness. She winked at Steve as she moved towards the exit, the other man being dragged behind her as she walked out with a shift of her hips. Bucky turned back towards the captain, squinting his eyes at the blonde.

 

“You guys were just in the neighborhood … were you?”

 

Steve scratched the back of his head, looking down at the shorter man through his lashes. “We’ve been tracking Rumlow for a while,” he confessed, “He use to work for SHIELD on their STRIKE team, but recently we found out about a terrorist cell within the organization. I asked Natasha to help me and we tracked him back to here,” he looked around the kitchen and the blood stains on the floor, “Good thing we did, too,”

 

“I had him on the ropes,” Bucky said with a sly smile.

 

“I know you did,” Steve laughed, then kissed the witch again.

* * *

_6 months later ...  
_

 

The annual festival on the day of the Samhain was one that every young child in the Temple of Gaia looked forward to every year. The notions of Halloween did creep up into the celebration, the sweets and costumes having rooted themselves for the children was a tradition that Bucky sorely missed from his childhood. He remembered the stories told under the Willow tree, huddled under a blanket that his mom insisted they use while holding Becca’s hand in case the monsters from the stories actually came to life to devour her.

 

For adults, it was a time of gratitude to the harvest, right in the middle of the autumn equinox and the winter solstice. They adorned ceremonial crowns of antlers, flowers, and twigs as they became one with Mother Gaia for the day, dancing around a roaring bonfire that followed a march from the Temple to a clearing where a great bonfire that reached to the stars. The march was always his favorite, holding hands with his grandmother and sister as they sang ancient hymns and chants that their ancestors could not during the time of persecution.

 

The day, however, was a barbeque with the Barnes’ family hosting and preparing a feast fit for Kings. The Supreme sat on a decorated chair, her white hair woven around wildflowers and antlers that she has had since she was a young girl. Despite her age, the woman only got more beautiful with age as she wore her wrinkles like badges of honor and wisdom. She was essentually like the grandmother of the entire coven, keeping tabs on everyone’s struggles and celebrations throughout the year. She was smiling at her coven members, taking their hands in hers and asking them if they are satisfied with the feast.

 

Becca, however, didn’t let that distract her from immediately bothering Steve and Bucky upon arrival.

 

Dressed in a white dress with a brown cloak over her shoulders, the woman bounced like a fairy to greet the couple with a wide smile and two small pumpkins in her hands. “Blessed Samhain!” she shouted, handing them the pumpkins and throwing her arms around her brother. “Blessed be,”

 

“Blessed be,” Bucky chimed back, hugging her back and smiling up at his boyfriend. _Boyfriend._ He had a boyfriend, who was standing next to him with a full beard he grew specifically for this occasion and dressed in a forest green sweater with a beige scarf wrapped around his neck and shoulders. He held a traditional Irish dish in his hands, waiting for his turn to hug the younger witch.

 

Becca finally pulled back, squealing at the sight of the dish and throwing her arms around Steve as well, “Welcome! I’m so excited for you to celebrate with us!” she said, taking the food into her hands and peering at it from under the tinfoil. “Does it have meat?”

 

“No, uh, Buck said you guys don’t eat any meat you haven’t hunted yourself and there isn’t much game in Manhattan,” he laughed, a full body blush already starting to creep down his neck. His hand found Bucky’s, though, and squeezed. Steve looked down at Becca’s feet, a shocked look written on his handsome features. “Are you barefoot?”

 

“It’s tradition,” she shrugged, moving the Queen Anne’s lace in her hair and adjusting the butterfly accessory in her hair. “The idea is to be as close to Mother Gaia as possible,”

 

Steve nodded in understanding and started to toe off his sneakers, smiling at Becca with his floppy hair and heavy whiskers. Maybe he could convince him not to shave the beard after this. He looked ravishing with a beard, in his right opinion. It would be a shame to see it all hacked off for the sake of looking “clean-cut” for the press and America.

 

The only regret Bucky had was that Natasha didn’t accept their invitation no matter how many times the witch reassured her that the Temple of Gaia accepted everyone. Hell, Steve was Irish Catholic and Grandma Ethel almost twisted his arm until he agreed to invite his boyfriend. She just waved him off, smiling into her mug and said something about having a coven already. “ _Hunters of Artemis,”_ she said, showing off a feather that was sewn into her braid, “ _We have our own gathering that night. Thank you for the invite, though. Tell the Supreme I said blessed Samhain,”_

 

Becca bounced toward the barbeque and the mass of bodies gathered in Samhain clothing, laughing and joyfully basking in the sunlight that managed to peek out from behind the Willow tree. Samantha hopped along side her, conversing with Becca and having a full on conversation without uttering a single word.

 

Sabrina meowed from inside his messenger bag, popping her head out to look at the feast before her. _“If you need me, I’ll be hunting mice,”_ she said, jumping out of his bag and running off into the bushes. Bucky frowned.

 

“Be careful! Goblin or not, hawks can still snatch you up!” Bucky called out after her, earning a chuckle from Steve. “What’s so funny, Mr. America?”

 

“Oh, c’mon. You’re so a mom,” the blonde laughed, holding his arm out for Bucky to loop his own around, “She’ll be fine. I’ve seen that cat bring down Clint’s dog,”

 

“Yeah, well, if I’m a mom, then you’re a grandma,”

 

“You’re childish,”

 

Winifred Barnes finally spotted them, her eyes perking up and calling them over from her place talking to one of the other mothers from the Temple, a plate of grilled corn in her hands. She pushed the plate onto the wooden picnic table, rushing over to Ethel Barnes from her unofficial throne. Whispering something into her ear, the two women turned to look at the newly arrived couple and opened their arms in a friendly gesture. Surrounded by their family – blood-related or not – brought the butterflies to Bucky’s stomach once more. He kissed his boyfriend’s cheek, and together, they headed towards the happy chirping of the coven.

 

Bucky couldn’t be happier.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!! Don't forget to drop a comment with any thoughts and give me a follow on tumblr @latinacap for more fics <3


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